Before Buying Online
How hidden incentives shape recommendations, and where web hosting cuts corners. Worth reading first, since it’s where this course’s reasoning comes from.

The Course
25 free tutorials, start to finish. The big choices behind it (domain, hosting, platform, and email) are laid out in Course Decisions, including why domain and hosting are taught separately instead of bundled. Skim it before starting, or jump in and come back to it later.

More Content
Same five chapters as the course (Setup, Explore, Build, Create, Earn), but standalone tutorials outside the core 25. For things outside a structured curriculum: extra tools, edge cases, and techniques not essential to the main course.

Downloads
Free tools and templates made for this course, ready to use on their own, no tutorial required.

Resources
Recommended resources: products, services, and companies, rated Green or Yellow Light. Ratings weigh quality and how useful each is for this audience, and with limited room at the top, Green stays rare. Picks come from both hands-on use and research. Wherever an affiliate link appears, a non-affiliate option sits beside it, so the choice is always yours.

This course keeps domain and hosting separate — most hosts can register a domain too, but bundling them means the host controls both, and untangling later gets messy fast. Some hosts just make leaving inconvenient; others register the domain in their own name entirely. Separation also matters if a host is acquired, changes ownership, or shuts down — none of that touches an independently registered domain. That’s why registration is taught through Namecheap instead: straightforward pricing, full control over where the domain points, and years of reliable, hands-on use — no host cooperation required, and nothing tying the two together that shouldn’t be.

Every site needs a foundation, and this chapter builds it: a domain, hosting, the connection between the two, a login for each person who needs one, and an email address that matches the site. Each lesson is short and hands-on, and each one sets up the next. By the end, there’s a live WordPress site on a domain of its own, with professional email through Proton Mail, ready for Chapter Two.

The order matters. The domain comes first, then hosting, because the host supplies the information the DNS step needs. DNS comes after that, and email comes last, since Proton Mail’s setup also happens through DNS records.

Domain and hosting are deliberately kept separate. Bundling them gives one company control of both, and separating them keeps the choice yours if a host ever needs to change.

In this chapter

• A. Domain: register the site’s address, separate from the host
• B. Hosting: set up the site on Kinsta
• C. DNS: use the host’s information to point the domain at the site
• D. WP Users: create and manage WordPress user accounts
• E. Domain Based Email: set up email at the site’s own domain with Proton Mail

With the site live, this chapter is a guided tour of the WordPress dashboard. Each lesson covers one area: how to get around, which settings matter, where media lives, and how themes, plugins, and widgets change what a site does and how it looks. By the end, the dashboard stops feeling like a maze, and every menu has a purpose.

The focus is on what to change and what to leave alone. WordPress ships with plenty of options that never need touching, and knowing which ones are safe to skip saves a lot of time and second-guessing.

In this chapter

• A. Navigating WordPress: find your way around the dashboard and see how a bare site differs from a fully built one
• B. Settings: what to change and what to skip
• C. Media Library: upload, organize, and reuse images and files
• D. Themes: how themes work and what they control
• E. Plugins: how plugins work and how to add one
• F. Widgets: how widgets work and where they show up

This chapter turns an empty site into a structured one. Pages and posts come first, then the way they nest, how categories and tags organize content, and how menus tie it all together. Bricks Builder comes last, once the structure is in place, so the design work has something solid to sit on.

Structure before design is deliberate. A site that is organized well is easier to build, easier to navigate, and easier to change later.

In this chapter

• A. Pages & Posts: the two building blocks of every WordPress site
• B. Nested Pages: organize pages into parents and children
• C. Cats & Tags: sort content so visitors and search engines can follow it
• D. Menus: build the navigation visitors actually use
• E. Bricks Builder: design pages visually on the canvas

A site needs content, and this chapter covers making it: AI assistants for writing and ideas, an asset library for images, video, and sound, AI voiceovers and music, and video editing in DaVinci Resolve. The tools are mostly free or affordable, and no prior experience is required.

AI speeds up the work but doesn’t replace judgment. Each lesson shows where these tools help, where they fall short, and how to keep the result sounding like it came from a person with something to say.

In this chapter

• A. LLMs & GenAI: use AI assistants for writing, research, and images
• B. Envato Elements: one subscription for stock footage, music, graphics, and templates
• C. AI Voiceovers: add narration without recording a voice
• D. AI Music: generate original tracks for videos and projects
• E. Video Editing: cut, polish, and export a finished video in DaVinci Resolve